Add-On Releases - Welcome headers - Improve community registration rates

Out of the box, your forum isn't personalized to assist or address your visitors. As a result, guests entering on a page other than the homepage (which is most often the case) have no idea what to do or why to register. Additionally, there are no visible status indicators, making it confusing for unconfirmed, unapproved or new members to know what to do or where to begin. But with a little customization, the use of the vBulletin Notices System and Welcome Headers, you can solve these issues in just a few minutes.

What is Welcome Headers?

Welcome Headers is a set of predefined messages and rules designed to help you get started in personalizing your site's notices using the vBulletin notice feature. The default templates are just that, default ? I highly encourage you to modify and add to the language and rules to meet the needs of your actual community environment.

Modifications/ Instructions:

Plugins: 1 (notices entries, rules and phrases)
This template hack should take under 5 minutes to implement and customize.

Installation/ Upgrade Instructions

1 ? Backup any existing welcome header messages (upgrading)
2 ? Remove the default welcome header from your forum home template (new installs)
3 ? Install the attached plugin file
4 ? Now Required: Customize the messages to include your site's name

For detailed instructions on each step please view the install.html file included with this addon.

Support

Please post any enhancement or technical questions you may have and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. Please note: I can not guarantee an immediate response and am unable to assist with integrating this addon with other addons or with HTML related questions.

Why use this when the notices system exists?

Welcome Headers have been around since before vBulletin 3.0 but as of 3.7 the functionality of the system was no longer needed as vBulletin added its own native feature to handle notices. However while the notices feature lets you show welcome header style messages it doesn't give you any to start with. This addon no longer adds functionality but instead provides a set of 4 notices that have been time-tested and help your forum grow and function better for guests and members.

Please be sure to customize and add to the messages from this addon to match the individual needs of your forum!

Older Version Support

While most users are choosing to upgrade to the notices system, there are some advantages to the "old" system mainly in that it does not rely on a rules system and can be configured as designed with code changes. Additionally, the "old" version has automatic interfacing with several other addons which the notices system does not. For this reason, the old version is still supported and remains fully compatible with 3.8.

Updates from 3.7

No changes have been made; the code needed for both is the same so upgrading is not necessary.

[TROLL]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

This won't be an issue with this mod, this mod simply installs some notices in the notice system to get you started, this mod does nothing more than that, it doesn't interact or change any files....etc so it's exactly as though you have created those notices yourself

Hey Simon,
I didn't explain clearly enough. I WANT notifications for each of these groups, but it is not showing notifications for the two that I listed. I am not sure what I am missing with it, if anyone has any ideas.

My one test username is Registered and has 2 posts, hasn't posted in over a year.
The other test username is Registered but has 0 posts.

Neither of these are getting any notification at the top although they should.

[TROLL]

Also, I have seen some forums that have a square advertisement to the left of their Notices... is this possible to integrate with this or is that achieved through a different modification?
An example of this is when you view this as a guest you see the Notice about registering but it has an ad to the left of it like you see here:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/index.php?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by TROLL

Also, I have seen some forums that have a square advertisement to the left of their Notices... is this possible to integrate with this or is that achieved through a different modification?
An example of this is when you view this as a guest you see the Notice about registering but it has an ad to the left of it like you see here:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/index.php?

That's nothing more than HTML. Just edit the notice to add whatever you want.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by TROLL

Hey Simon,
I didn't explain clearly enough. I WANT notifications for each of these groups, but it is not showing notifications for the two that I listed. I am not sure what I am missing with it, if anyone has any ideas.

My one test username is Registered and has 2 posts, hasn't posted in over a year.
The other test username is Registered but has 0 posts.

Neither of these are getting any notification at the top although they should.

Check the notices manager. There should be 4 different notices in total... find the two not working and check that the settings are as you want them to be.

[TROLL]

Hey Ted, thanks for the response. I've been working on this and testing it but no luck... it should be quite simple but its just not working.
I tried creating new notices with the same conditions but still no luck... I took a screenshot of how my "Post More Often" notice is set up in case anyone sees something out of whack. I believe this is still in its original configuration as installed.
The first 3 settings are: Active? Yes. Persistent? Yes. Dismissable? No.



UPDATE: For the "Never Posted" Notice - If I change the one requirement from "User has no posts" to "User's postcount is between 0 and 0 posts" it works... leaving the other 2 requirements the same. I don't understand...
Still have not figured out how to get the "Post More Often" one to work, and would like to find out why the "Never Posted" one doesn't work in its original configuration.

[Ted S]

Strange.

For the remaining message try killing all other criteria and see if that helps?

The notices system is a part of vBulletin so you can get official support on it.

[Bro_Joey_Gowdy]

Uninstalled and upgraded to the 4.0.x version with more features:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=231384

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Bro_Joey_Gowdy

Uninstalled and upgraded to the 4.0.x version with more features:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=231384

To be clear the notices system is not ours, it's part of vB 4 core. We just ported our messages & settings over to give people the jump start.